


I'm a goner, somebody catch my breath {I wanna be known by you}

by ashintuku



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-24 03:59:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9699524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashintuku/pseuds/ashintuku
Summary: "You're the pilot."





	

He was the pilot. 

He was the pilot – the traitor, the turncoat, shameful and a blot on the perfection of the Empire; something to try and take out before he did anything to damage their perfect future. He was a nobody who decided to try and be something he really wasn’t: he tried to be good, to be a rebel, to do the right thing. But what could he do, honestly? Pass over a message and hope it reached the right people? Pass on a message and hope that the paranoid man gasping in the breather was the right person to trust with the information? 

He wondered what Galen thought he could do, sending him out into the unknown with the promises that all he had to be was a little bit brave, and everything would be fixed – one way or another. He wondered what Galen wanted him to accomplish, sending him to Saw Gerrera without any warning as to what the rebel was like. 

Tentacles pressed against his forehead, neck and chest in phantom-memory, and he breathed in shakily; the smell of engine oil, dirt, and concrete sweating in the sun hitting him. The base was alive and breathing around him, pilots in orange and officers in muted browns and beiges marching and jogging by him in turn. Everything always seemed a little chaotic; a little messy in the rebel base, like they were always a step from being fully organized. It was as if the rebellion had started to race with only one thrusters working, the other still being worked on, and they were flying through canyons and craters while the repair team was still trying to fix the other thrusters. 

Bodhi wasn’t sure how he felt about any of it, but he knew he felt safer here than he had in Saw Gerrera’s underground prison-palace. Maybe even safer here than he had with the Empire, when he had a job and a purpose and nobody was hunting him down for going above his station. 

He was the pilot. 

Breathing in again, he glanced around to see that the others were scattered; Jyn speaking to a few important-looking people, Cassian speaking to a few other pilots and rebels who looked tired and haunted like him. The droid who was Empire-but-Rebel was staying close to Cassian, and the two Guardians – Chirrut and Baze – they were by themselves, not too far from him; speaking in soft tones in a language that was not Common. Nobody else was paying any attention to him; him sitting on some boxes, curled up and running his fingers through his hair over and over to try and soothe himself. 

He remembered plasma fire and science bases going up in flames; remembered hearing, faintly, like an echoing whisper, the screams of a daughter who lost her father. He remembered feeling a little more hollow inside because Galen was dead and would never be able to tell him what he had wanted Bodhi to do. 

His breathing stuttered and stopped in his chest and he cinched his eyes shut tight. His fingers dug against his scalp, chasing away tentacle-memory and replacing it with water slick-sliding down his neck and back, into his clothes; the sounds of X-wing engines and TIE fighters shrieking in his skull like a bad headache. 

“You’re the pilot.” 

Jerking, Bodhi looked up and over to see a slight woman in white staring at him. She was pretty, with dark hair up in a hairstyle that suggested wealth – no common woman had the time or energy to twist their hair in such intricacies, even ones as simple as two buns. She had dark eyes and pale skin and looked like a china doll with a vendetta against the world. 

He breathed out slowly; uncurled himself from his ball. The others were still in their own pockets, paying no mind to him. He looked back to the woman and nodded slowly. 

“Yes,” he said, voice soft; his mother had always told him he had a gentle, comforting voice. A soothing voice, made for soothing others. He thought back on the blood on his hands, now, after he had blown up so many of his own comrades; breathed in deeply, and paid attention back to the woman. “Yes, I—I’m the pilot.” 

“You don’t look like an Imperial pilot – well, outside of the uniform, at any rate.” She waved at him, narrowing her eyes speculatively as she took him in. “You don’t have the, hmmm. The sneer, I suppose. You lack any sneering or arrogance.” She tilted her head, then, taking him in. “You look a little terrified, honestly.” 

Bodhi stared at the woman, wide-eyed, inching back a little on his crates and wondering why no one was taking her attention away from him. She had to be important: she looked too clean to be a grunt, too strong to be only a follower. She reminded him, a little, of Mon Mothma – of Bail Organa. She held herself like the both of them. Really, she looked a little familiar. 

“But I suppose you did what was needed, in the end,” she said, and suddenly she smiled and her entire face changed. Her angles softened and she looked young, younger than him, and a little bit amused. He wondered if she was amused by him or because of him. He wondered what he had done to amuse her at all.

“What was needed?” 

“Yes,” she nodded, looking over her shoulder as if waiting to be called for, “you gave the push that made every other senator in this base terrified. You made us all look at the Empire for what it really is – you made us think about what we’re doing.” She smiled, then, looking at him properly. “Everyone will give the credit to Jyn Erso, because she’s Galen Erso’s daughter and Saw Gerrera’s prodigy, and she’s the headstrong personality. But I want you to remember that you’re the one that made this all possible in the first place. You’re the pilot, after all.” 

Bodhi blinked at her, wide-eyed and gobsmacked. 

“...I—I’m the pilot...” 

“Princess!” 

The woman looked away from him again, sighing; her face shuttering back into the cool competence of someone who knows exactly what she’s doing. Her name clicked in his memory, then, and he sucked in a deep breath as she shook her head. 

“I’m glad I got to meet you, Bodhi Rook,” Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan, representative in the Imperial Senate and daughter of Bail Organa, told him, giving him one last smile. “You’ve done a lot of good to making everything right in the galaxy again.” 

She walked away from him, then, marching purposely across the grounds just like everyone else. Jyn looked up from her corner of the hangar, lifting a hand and waving to him. 

“Bodhi! The meeting’s going to start, come on!” 

Stumbling, Bodhi spilled himself off of the crates and jogged over to her, feeling out of place and awkward and a little detached. She smiled at him and started heading inside, and he followed after her, the princess’ words rocking in his head. 

~+~

Breathing shakily, heart in his throat, explosions in the air and his new friends crying out in agony as they died just outside of the shuttle, Bodhi looked at the screen that had just gone silent; his message sent through, his job done. 

“I’m the pilot,” he whispered, fingers shaking and clinging onto the cord that so many had been killed to connect. The shriek of X-wings and TIE fighters blocked out the shriek of dying souls, and closed his eyes. 

“I’m the pilot,” he said, a little more loudly, and he remembered the princess in white who smiled at him; remembered Galen as he pressed the file into his hands and asked him to be just a little bit brave. He opened his eyes and looked out of the shuttle to the open doors; smoke drifting through the air. 

“I’m the pilot,” he said, loud and clear and he smiled. He was the pilot: he was the driving force to make all of this happen. If he hadn’t decided to be just a little brave, none of this would be happening. They would say it was Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor; they would say it was rebel spies and competent soldiers that started to make the galaxy right again. 

But he started it. He started it. He watched as a grenade was thrown into the shuttle, knowing what was about to happen, and he breathed out; steady and quiet and the calmest he had ever been. 

He was the pilot.


End file.
